Rollin' on the River

We are back from an all-too-brief trek to Austin and regions southward -- not that I wanted to be gone from home any longer than we were, but it was far too brief a time to spend among such excellent hobbits, most of whom I like at least half as well as they deserve. My enduring regret was that I didn't really avail myself of the chance to eat real Mexican while in town, because the stuff that passes for "Mexican" in Ohio just ain't in it. 

We found it necessary to take a jaunt over to Baton Rouge to visit some family, so we took a side trip up to historic Woodville, MS, where my grandparents used to live in this here house. 

The tall guy is my brother Nathanael, and the babe with the sunglasses is my operatic sister Anna, who was an angel of helpfulness on our trip.

Alas, we couldn't go in the house, so I couldn't show Darwin the places I always talk about: the huge living room and dining room connected with pocket doors, where all the cousins used to put on plays; the upstairs bedroom with the taxidermy deer head (it scared the daylights out of me as a child); the music room, the front hall, the long screened porch that ran the back length of the house; the guest house and the pool house; the long path on the back property that lead to a statue of St. Francis in the woods.

Then, as a public service to fans of Stillwater, we drove down River Road to the former site of Belle Grove, my model for the Stillwater house. Alas, Belle Grove passed into decay and ruin years ago, but there's a historical marker commemorating the huge plantation.

That's the levee rising up on the left.

Across the road from the historical marker, two huge oaks mark what I'm guessing might have been Belle Grove's entrance. There's a small housing development on the property now. 

Since we couldn't look at Belle Grove, we did the next best thing: we went upriver three miles to her great rival, Nottoway, which is still gloriously extant and now the grandest plantation house on the river.

The double staircase was intended to allow John Randolph's seven daughters to walk up to the house without any men catching glimpses of their ankles.

But Anna, about to be married, doesn't have to worry about such social niceties.

The interior of Nottoway is breathtakingly lavish. The great ballroom was painted white to show off the complexion of the ladies.

Here's the youngest lady looking elegant. The silver pull behind her is the servants' bell.

 Nottoway is on the river, of course, and from the upper balcony one has a fabulous view of the water. It would have been even more striking when the plantation was built -- then the levee was only ten feet; now it's fifty.

Anna is backlit, but the river is in full light. 

The trees on the left are an island in the river, formed by an earthquake in 1813, if I remember correctly. There used to be a road running from the front of the plantation as far as the trees.

Looking at the back of the house, where the wings all joined together, one got a sense of the scale of the place. Here, the main house on the left is joined by the stair galleries leading to one of the side wings, which I believe are all guest rooms now. The Boys' Wing is behind the main house. On the ground floor were storage and service areas and a bowling alley for the children -- now kitchens, restaurants, and a museum.

 For comparison with the remaining oaks at Belle Grove, here is the front yard of Nottoway. River Road is just beyond the white fence.

More photos of Nottoway can be found here.

Easy Listening

As we headed off on the first evening leg of last week's ten-hour trip to Wisconsin, we anticipated a ride eased by the dulcet tones of a British narrator reading about mayhem and bloodshed in rabbit warrens. Yes, Watership Down was on the menu: eleven cassettes promising enough listening hours to keep the back seat pacified for most of the drive.

And then I put in the first tape. The player whirred, clicked, and spit it out. I tried again. Same routine. I tried a different tape. I tried several different tapes. It was of no avail -- the tape player had gone on strike, perhaps permanently.  I rummaged around, but I'd cleaned the van so thoroughly before my brother's wedding that there were no random CDs on the floor or shoved into various compartments. The back seat was getting restive, waiting for their promised book. Faced with the onrushing prospect of the long haul with no trusty audio to soothe the riotous masses, I almost went tharn.

So we tracked radio stations all across the midwest. The oldies station has become very popular with the ladies, so we followed the Columbus station as long as we could follow the signal. Then we said the rosary, and no one went to sleep. Then we threatened. Then we got to Toledo and people were quiet, but we had to drive the beltway around the whole city because we missed our exit because I was reading to Darwin. We knew we were going the wrong way when we saw that the highway was headed to Detroit.

Day two was harder. We listened to The Globe across Northern Indiana, which was the sort of awesome eclectic station I wish I could find at home. My listening pleasure was impeded, however, by a certain someone attempting to hold the car hostage by throwing a huge screaming tantrum in which she repeatedly demanded that she be allowed to sit in the middle seat on the second half of the trip. You think someone would get bored yelling, "I want to sit in the middle seat of the car on the second half of the trip!" for an hour at a time, but the young have an intensity and staying power that eludes their elders.

Digression: I tell you what, my dad is a mild-mannered guy, but if he had ever had occasion to pull this car over and tell me that if I didn't stop it, there would be serious consequences, I would have listened and piped the heck down. All I can say is that it really is better to be feared than loved sometimes, and on this trip it felt like we the adults were neither.

It was time to take measures on the trip back. We stopped at Barnes and Noble in Madison, WI and fortified ourselves for the journey with 4.5 hours of dramatized Sherlock Holmes stories (Sir John Gielgud as Holmes and Sir Ralph Richardson as Watson), 2 hours of Aesop's Fables, and the two-disc collection of Dr. Demento's Greatest Hits.

Dr. Demento, host of the novelty hit radio show! You all know his signature song: They're Coming To Take Me Away, by Napoleon XIV.



This very same Dr. Demento collection, which I listened to (on tape) fifteen years ago, features a song I first heard on a carefully preserved 45 lp of my dad's: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, by Allan Sherman. The tantrummer listened, laughed, and pronounced it good.



One song which amused my children but was fairly inexplicable to them was Star Trekking (Across the Universe) by The Firm. I saw a lot of Star Trek in my time, but since we don't have broadcast TV, they've never had occasion to see old episodes while flipping through channels. Star Trek is rather a dying cultural phenomenon anyway, mostly remembered through parody.



One of the most weirdly catchy tunes on the album was Fish Heads by Barnes and Barnes, featured here in their own music video as seen on the Dr. Demento show on MTV. It's pretty delightfully demented.



Eat them up, yum!

And we rode peacefully all the way home. Thank you, Dr. Demento.

What we did on our summer vacation

We spent the weekend in the wilds of Wisconsin, where the internet access is sparse and the milk is fresh. The occasion was the  2012 Gerasene Writers' Conference, sponsored by The Korrectiv. The alchohol consumption was prodigious, the under-18 population was positively anti-Malthusian, and the highlight of the weekend was the world-premiere reading of Matthew Lickona's Surfing with Mel, a short story in script form about Mel Gibson's (further) descent into madness as he tries to get a film project about the Maccabees off the ground. (Here's the germ of the project, though the workshopped story had a different focus and was powers of ten more profane.)

Also, people told me what was wrong with the beginning of my novel, and Darwin blew things away out on the back 40.

And while we were packing, we found the key to turn Eleanor's expander, stashed deep under the seats of the car. Vacation: truly a time of renewal.

Vacation, part I: Long Car Rides

What most of the country looks like from major interstates.

Driving long distances with kids. I think it's wise not to live-blog vacations, because every post would be a clever variation on "These kids are driving me crazy!" Whereas in retrospect, we can now say that everything went smoothly. And that we wish we had more days of vacation, which we certainly did not wish as we pulled into our driveway at 11:30 PM two Saturdays ago.

(When we say we wish we had more vacation, we actually wish that we as adults could go away together with no kids for some period of time comprising less than a week and more than a weekend. This is clearly a pipe dream at this point in time, but it's good to have goals.)

There is no magic doohickus that will stop kids from arguing in the back seat (unless maybe you are inclined to go the DVD-player-in-the-car route, which we are not), but one can stave off some fights with numerous activity books, multiple sets of crayons, and books on CD. Note to parents of the 4-8 set: Pippi Longstocking was a big hit. The Rescuers was a close second. The girls enjoyed Ella Enchanted, but the little-girl voice of the reader undercut the story to adult ears.

When your kids sleep for long stretches in the car, be prepared for craziness in a hotel room later, especially if the main snoozer is a small boy of 18 months.

A long car ride with your spouse is the ideal time to plan out the rest of your life together, especially since none of the plans require concrete action at that moment.

If I never see another Starbucks coffee drink, it'll be too soon. And I discovered that Starbucks (or maybe just the one in Jackson, Miss.) doesn't carry lemon wedges for tea. What is that all about? I think some enterprising person should start a nationwide chain of quality tea houses. I'd be all over that.

We met up with many great bloggers on our trip, but now is a good time to recognize the wonderful people in Nashville who gave us breakfast and good company: Jordana of Curmudgeonry and Meredith of Like Merchant Ships. I want to live in Jordana's purple bungalow, and that's high praise.

So much for that

Well, I was going to write up the clever vacation post with pix and commentary, but one of the girls is down with the stomach bug today and that just puts me off my blog feed.

So, here's a picture of sweet, silly Wendy Margaret in her baptismal gown, the same one my father wore more than 50 years ago. This picture does not do it (or her, of course) justice: it's replete with cunning tucks and embroidery, as is the matching bonnet.


My own baptismal gown, which all the little Darwins have worn, has aged to a distinguished ivory, but Wendy's was as white as the new-driven snow. We have Darwin's gown (also handmade) as well, but he was a much larger baby than his children have turned out to be, and so no one has been big enough to fit into it.

You Can Go Home Again

Of all the various stops on our vacation to look forward to, the one I'm anticipating most is Blacksburg, Virginia. That's where we lived until I was twelve, and though I haven't seen it for twenty years I remember it as being one of the most beautifully pastoral places on earth. We had nine acres out in the country, down a quarter-mile driveway, with cows on two sides and a horse farm on a third. (The back side of the property faced the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.) It was the ideal place to be a kid -- fresh air, countryside, lots of stupid cows on the other side of the fence. Of course we were always respectful when we had to walk down the driveway on the other side of the fence. Then the cows stopped being just stupid and seemed actively malevolent. But I digress.

While researching our trip on Google Maps, I discovered the feature that lets you take a street view of the address you're looking up. And then I discovered, to my delight, that some things don't change, except for the better: the driveway looks just like I remember it, only with an appropriate twenty-years-worth of tree growth.


View Larger Map

I spent a fascinating hour "driving" the roads around our old home, and everything looks exactly as I remember it. There are plenty of places that change in twenty years, but I'm overjoyed to find that my childhood memories are more than fulfilled by the present reality.

Still alive, kinda

Sometime this week we will resume posting in a semi-regular fashion. Today, however, we are still recovering from our 23 hour roadtrip on Saturday. Family togetherness, y'all!

Our thanks go out to all the wonderful bloggers we were privileged to visit during our trip:

Entropy
Fr. Fox
Jay Anderson
TS
Betty Duffy
Rich Leonardi
Scott Carson

Having a Great Time, Wish You Were Here

MrsDarwin here, just now surfacing to say that the wedding was the most beautiful I've ever attended, bar none. The day was a superlative. Even nature cooperated -- there was 70% chance of showers, but instead the day was overcast and the light diffused, making for some marvelous pictures in the park. My sister was the most radiant, lovely bride, and the wedding mass itself went without a hitch. Many thanks go to the celebrant, Fr. Schnippel, who recognized us as The Darwins even though we were in our street clothes.

And the reception was about the most kickin' event ever. Good food, good company, old friends, and several special live performances made this the best reception in the history of receptions. The bar has been set high for any other wedding I attend from now on, because I'll be thinking, "How does this compare to the Egan/Wolf wedding of '09?"

As the groomsmen were all standing around the parking lot of the reception hall, waiting for the ladies to arrive for pictures, they were talking about needing an omen for the day. At that point, one of them looks up and says, "Look, a hawk with a snake!" Sure enough, there was a hawk circling above them with a snake in its beak. Anyone want to read the entrails and interpret for us?

Beach reading

We didn't take a vacation this year (except vicariously, through TS's travel posts), so I have to make my escape through reading. Yesterday I went to the beach, courtesy of Jeff Sawyer.

Outside on the small deck of the Isle de Veau, Jack squinted into the concrete gray sky as he cranked open a half-dozen blue Cinzano umbrellas, in case anyone actually showed up for lunch in this lousy weather. Three-foot waves gnawed at the beach in the distance, the wind occasionally carrying spray through angled palms all the way to his tan, tired face. It dampened the faded tee that hung loosely off his frame, and his cargo shorts, and his mood. Little electric Japanese lanterns strung around the deck arbor had twisted up tight, hanging themselves in their cords, the relentless wind shifting their vibe from island chic to bleak. The whole island felt like that to Jack these days, like paradise lost. Just a photo in a glossy brochure faded to light blue after sitting too long in the window of a travel agency in some snowy New England town.

Every morning he’d see crusty old retirees who’d responded to brochures like that, pensioned dinosaurs plodding along the beach on crunchy knees, bracing their backs with one hand to stoop and pick up shells with the other, artifacts they mailed to grandchildren back home. Under floppy cotton hats, their thin, hoary hair was whipped by the wind against cocoa wrinkles. Where did they get those ridiculous faux Hawaiian shirts, stretch pants and giant sunglasses, he wondered, what were they thinking? He devised a name for their geezer ensembles, and reminded himself to see if it’d get a laugh out of Car when she arrived at the Isle for dinner that night: Last Resort Wear.

Shipwrecked on the Isle de Veau, Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Virtual vacation

Feel like you just need to get away, but can't? Don't worry -- TS goes to the beach so that we don't have to.

Oh how ineffably cruel, the car that takes you away, away from that bay. How cruel the jet that takes you from the sparkling sands and jet-blue skies!

Too soon by a half! I’m suffering from post-traumatic non-stress syndrome.

.....

Running down the run-down Mandalay road along the beach you can see why ex-pats from the North descend here to live out a Jimmy Buffet song. The boxy motels along the sun-drunk lane lends a fittingness to Florida’s claim as the last home of Jack Kerouac.

Reminds me of a college town, with the sleepy, sunny mornings, the shopkeepers just opening up at 10am, the modest squat houses of ‘60s & ‘70s vintage with “For Rent” signs. The languor in the air. The young people and cigarette smoke, the beer-drinkers in the stoop.

Beer, like heaven and hell, transcends time at Clearwater Beach. At the sit-up window outside the Mandalay Grill a middle-aged couple are happily consuming beer, an hour and a half before noon. At Kelly’s, a sign redefines the word ‘hour’: “Happy Hour 12-7”. This too was college, when alcohol wasn’t just for lunch & dinner.

I always imagine vacations as Larry Hagman days. Hagman, the actor who played JR Ewing, had at least two eccentricities. One, is he spent one day not uttering a word, a natural enough thing for an actor given how he spends his or her time. Their way of resting. The other is that he went though every waking moment slightly tipsy. It cost him his liver, but I figure I can do the same for a few hours daily while on vacation.

T-shirt sighted: “Give me a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in a boat and drink all day.”

Don't miss the photo of him using his hat to open a beer.

Trip Prep

At Chez Darwin, preparations are in full swing for next week's road trip to Cincinnati. Getting out of the house never used to be such a big fuss when it was just the two of us. Now, however, one must pack diapers, sippy cups, stuffed animals, snacks, and plenty of cleaning supplies. Add these to our plan to leave the house at around 3:30 am next Monday (oh, and the girls' dance recital is on Sunday afternoon) and packing and getting the house ready becomes a week-long affair.

The plan (ha! ha! the plan!) is to clean one room and complete some essential packing task a day. Will this result in a clean house and a full van Sunday night? Stay tuned...